Aberrant: In the Beginning - Cottus Centimane

[Typhon]

April 10th, 1998 6:30am

*beep-beep* *beep-beep*

*beep-beep* *beep-beep*

*beep-beep* *beep-beep*

. . . . . .

Leon Golias sat up in his bead and punched the hateful thing of plastic that was his alarm clock. Not quite ready to get up, he lay back down again.

Just for a minute.

. . . . . .

April 10th, 1998 6:45am

*beep-beep* *beep-beep*

*beep-beep* *beep-beep*

*beep-beep* *beep-beep*

. . . . . .

Leon Golias sat up in his bed and punched the hateful thing of plastic that was his alarm clock.

Again.

. . . . . .

A couple of minutes later his brain started working, so he got out of bed.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Typhon]

April 10th, 1998 7:25am

Finishing his Wheaties, Leon tossed the bowl in the sink, grabbed his bag and his plank, and then headed out his front door without bothering to holler a goodbye to his aunt. Figured he'd see her later tonight anyway.

After a couple of minutes of standing outside in the brisk morning air, glancing impatiently at his watch, Leon finally saw his friend's car pull around the corner onto his street. Finally. Leon thought briefly of how awesome it was to be one of the few seniors in the entire school who couldn't drive themselves to school, and all the great things it was doing for his self-image, but then decided he was being stupid and dropped it. Awake for less than an hour, and already thinking negative thoughts? Looks like it's gonna be a great day!

Derrick pulled his car carelessly into the driveway, coming dangerously close to taking Leon's legs right out from under him as he did so. Leon didn't even make a passing attempt to get out of the way, instead reaching for the door handle before the car had even come to a complete stop. Ah, reckless youth.

Pulling the passenger side door open, Leon tossed his plank between the two front seats, onto the back seat, and then hopped in the car.

"Hey", he said.

"Dude", said Derrick, and yawned.

"Yeah", agreed Leon.

Sighing and smacking his lips sleepily, Derrick put it in reverse and pulled out onto the street, and then popped it back into drive and started out for school. Derrick's radio didn't work, so they drove in silence.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Typhon]

April 10th, 1998 7:34am

Leon unzipped his bag and pulled out a notepad and a pen. Flipping it open, he started reading. This is what it said:

Verse 1

You know you'll never be free

So you'll lay sit back & watch life pass you by.

You'll be singing sitting in your tree

& you won't crack a smile or show them anything.

Life is what you made it make of it,

But you made it wrong, and now you're sick of it.

You wanna die cry, but you'll never ask why

& now you're all alone, & you want to die.

Chorus

We spend our time

Walking on a very thin lie

You're Don't risk your life

Walking on such a thin lie.

There's more to this world

Than just what we can see.

No one's got it all worked out,

But we all share the same doubts.

He sighed. It was pretty good, but their was a jump between the verse and the chorus that was just too jarring. Maybe put in a bridge? He tapped his teeth with the butt of the pen while he thought about it.

It'd been a shit week so far, as the lyrics to his newest song attested to. He'd gotten suspension once already for getting into a fight on school grounds (or that's what the teachers called it - as far as Leon was concerned, it barely qualified as a friendly wrestling match, but whatever), he failed a big test in his Chemistry class on Wednesday, which totally sucked balls, but the worst had been just yesterday, after school. He and Natalie'd gotten into it big time, and it'd all been about stupid stuff; all this emotional crap, and things he just didn't want to think about right now.

So what if their senior year was almost up and he didn't even know if he was going to college, let alone where! Why did he have to decide all that right now? What was wrong with waiting? And why did she always have to get so emotional and put all this freakin' pressure on him?

Of course, he knew the answer to that without having to ask, but it didn't make it any less frustrating. He was her way out, her vicarious escape, her one shot at freedom. Or that's how she saw it, anyways. Since her accident last summer, she'd begun to depend on him more and more, and it didn't take a psychic to know that she was afraid of what would happen after they graduated. But didn't she realize he was, too? Didn't she realize what a commitment college was? Didn't she realize how much of a commitment what she wanted from him was? It was a goddammed life sentence, is what it was! Why couldn't she just accept that eighteen year old boys aren't mature enough to make these kinds of decisions, and just be patient?

Yeah, right. Since the accident, the poor girl could hardly move anymore; all she had was patience.

The argument had finally ended when she'd asked, in a querulous and (just bein' honest, here) petulant tone of voice if he even wanted to be with her anymore. Leon didn't know how to answer a shitty question like that. Didn't know what to do with the feelings it caused to boil up inside him, threatening to vomit out of him in a technicolored emotional breakdown. So he'd just turned around and walked out of her house.

Life is what you make of it,

But you made it wrong, and now you're sick of it.

God-Damn-it!

The song had come later, after he'd cooled down a bit, sitting in his room in the (relative) safety of his aunt's house. He'd only really gotten through the first verse, and was pretty pleased with the chorus. But it still needed at least one more verse, and, he was more and more certain, a bridge to smooth the gap between the verse and the chorus.

He clenched his teeth, lowered his pen to the paper, and wrote:

Bridge

You want me & and I want to,

But something in me won't relinquish control.

He looked at what he'd written. He grimaced; "relinquish control"? Man, that was terrible! "Relinquish"? Was it even possible to sing that so it didn't sound like crap? He scratched it out, and then tried something else. He sat back and reread the bridge, with its new line, and was much happier with how it looked. Just then Derrick turned into the school's parking lot, and went diving for a parking spot that presented itself right up at the front of the normally crowded lot. Leon closed his pad and put it and the pen back in his bag, zipping it up and then reaching into the back seat for his board.

As they got out of the car, Leon thanked Derrick for the ride, and then headed towards his locker and the start of another school day. As he went he hummed out the bridge he'd just written, trying to work out the notes and chords he'd want to play over it. He was pretty sure it worked, but he wouldn't know for certain until he was able to sit down and actually play the notes out along with the words. Letting the matter drop for now, Leon made his way onto the school's grounds, and the life he'd made there.

In his pack, on a page inside a closed notepad, were the words:

Bridge

You want me & I want to,

But something in me just won't let go.

Yeah, it was gonna be a great day.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Typhon]

April 10th, 1998 12:35pm

Leon was sitting at one of the cafeteria tables, the remains of his lunch sitting off to one side, and joking with Derrick. He was still trying to decide if he was going to acknowledge that, so far, his day hadn't been that bad. Not half bad at all, really.

"So", asked Derrick, "you seen Mr. Nice Guy yet?"

"No!", answered Leon, "but I've meaning to. It looks really cool."

"Dude! Totally! You wanna go check it out this afternoon? We could go check it out, and then go straight to tonight's table-top session from there."

"Dude, I'd love to", Leon said, "but I can't. I need to walk Natalie home after school today."

"Oh", said Derrick, clearly crestfallen. "That's lame that her mom doesn't come and pick her up. I know she lives just down the street, but that's still gotta suck."

"Yeah, but her family can't afford to get her a car right now, and her mom can't afford to take off work to come get her", answered Leon. "And her dad wrecked there truck, so...", he muttered.

"Plus... uh... we sorta got into a fight last night. So, you know, she's probably gonna wanna talk about it."

Leon looked significantly at Derrick, and said, "you know how girls are, dude."

Derrick returned the look and nodded knowingly, a sage look in his eyes. Derrick didn't have a girlfriend, and never had.

"That's cool, man. Sucks about the fight, though."

"Yeah", muttered Leon, his mood starting to sink again, now that he was thinking about last night.

"Hey", said Derrick, "I gotta go, man. I need to go see about scoring some... uh...." Derrick mimed an action that looked suspiciously like smoking a joint, and smiled mischievously. Leon just smiled back, and shook his head.

"So, you're still gonna be at tonight's gaming session, though right?"

"Totally dude." Leon looked at Derrick as if to say, "you have to ask?"

Derrick smiled then and waved, "alright, catch ya later, man."

Leon waved back.

After a few seconds of sitting and thinking, Leon pulled out his notepad again, flipped it open to the proper page, and set about completing his song. It only really took him about another fifteen minutes before he had what he felt was, at the very least, a real good rough draft. He really had a lot to get off his chest, apparently. Writing songs didn't normally come to him so quickly. He reviewed what he'd written so far with a look of quiet satisfaction on his face.

This is what he wrote:

Verse 2

Life's too short for living it

But the day's too long, & you aren't going anywhere.

You're firmly rooted in the sea,

But the tide's going out & you've got no place to stand.

Falling, you finally feel free,

But your life is gone, and it never had meaning.

You could never really see

That you never were free. You just let things be.

Damn. That was really negative! It made him wonder what was going on his head, and it also made him a little depressed. He sighed and closed the pad; he'd work on getting the kinks out of it some other time. Lunch was almost over, and he needed to go get his books for his next class. Then he looked up and saw Natalie making her slow way over to his table. His stomach started doing tiny flip flops, and suddenly he felt really guilty, though he had no idea why (or if he did, he wasn't admitting it to himself).

Since her accident last summer, Natalie Rose Valeroso was a broken shadow of her former self. Where she had once been the most beautiful girl in school (and it wasn't Leon who thought that, it was everyone - Leon thought she was the most beautiful girl in the entire world), her face, neck, and shoulder were now a mass of scar tissue. Where once she had been a charter member of the cheerleading squad and the dance team, she now needed the help of a walker just to hobble along at a turtle's pace. Though she'd lost the lean, muscular tone of an avid dancer, she was still a slender girl, and the accident hadn't taken away her womanly curves. And though her face was covered in scars, it hadn't erased the face that lay underneath. But this was a sad joke, though, as it only served to remind people of just how far she'd fallen from the glorious creature she'd once been.

Some of new kids at the school probably thought that a social outcast like Leon had only been able to score a girl at all because he'd gone for a broken mess like Natalie. Leon, however, knew that he'd somehow managed to win her over back when she'd been one of the social elite. A beautiful and magnificent young woman with no real equal in all the school. A large part of Leon (the romantic part) still thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, even now, and it made him angry whenever anyone implied that she wasn't. The kids who weren't new, though, they knew the truth of the matter (or thought they did, anyway), and so most of them tended to look at both Natalie and Leon with a little bit of pity in their eyes. Most of them. Some of them only looked at Natalie with pity. To Leon they cast dark glares and hateful looks, though none of them were brave enough to actually say anything to his face (which was good, because Leon would probably kick their asses into next week if any of them ever did). As far as those kids were concerned, Natalie's condition was his fault, which was a lie, but a persistant lie that had only seemed to grow stronger as his final year in school had neared it's end.

Natalie had begun seeing Leon while she'd still been "officially" going out with another, older boy. One who was in a gang. Who'd discovered that she was cheating on him, and who'd shown up at a house party Leon and Natalie had attended with one of his carnales, with the clear intention of kicking the shit out of Leon. When Leon had shown them both just exactly how he'd earned the reputation for being one of the toughest motherfuckers in a school full of gangbangers, drug dealers, and borderline psychos, they had both gone stumbling back to their ride and disappeared into the night. Leon had thought that was the end of it. How stupid he'd been.

It turned out later that Natalie's boyfriend had apparently decided that, if he couldn't have the satisfaction of beating on Leon, then Leon wouldn't have the satisfaction of being with Natalie. So he'd called her father and told him where she was, and how to get there. Her father had, of course, been furious to hear that his baby was at a house party, with god-only-knew what kind of debauchery going on there. His righteous, belligerent anger was all the worse since he was piss-drunk at the time - a common condition for the man. He'd driven just as fast as he could to the party, and had literally dragged Natalie out of there and into his pickup truck. He'd then driven just as fast as he could about six miles down the road, before swerving drunkenly into the oncoming lane, and running headlong into another vehicle.

Natalie had been the only one to survive the accident, but only barely. Her ex-boyfriend, perversely, still blamed Leon for everything that had happened.

"Hi", she said, having finally arrived at his table, a slightly shy look in her eyes.

"Hi back", said Leon, not a little awkwardly, and trying really hard not to avoid her gaze.

"I... uh... didn't realize you were in school today. I didn't see you this morning, so I thought...." Leon's words tapered off. He felt like he was making excuses.

"Oh, no!", smiled Natalie, trying to make the mood lighter, "I just woke up feeling crummy is all. I've had a headache since...", then she faltered and looked away for a second. "Since last night night. So I was late getting to school this morning."

She smiled again, "my mom was pretty mad at me, since I made her late to work."

Leon laughed half-heartedly and cleared his throat.

"Listen...", he said, "about last night...." He struggled to find the words he needed to say.

Natalie looked away again and blushed. "Yeah...", was all she said.

There was an extremely awkward moment of silence, and then they both exclaimed, "I'm sorry!", simultaneously.

They both stopped in the middle of what they were about to say, and stared at each other for an instant, and then they both laughed. It was a normal, natural, genuine laugh, and Leon suddenly felt a thousand pounds lighter for it.

He smiled a bittersweet smile at her and said, "No, don't be sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. I was the jerk. I shouldn't have just walked out on you like that. It was totally uncalled for."

Natalie just looked at him with sympathy in her eyes, and answered, "yeah, well I shouldn't have pressured you so much, or asked you such stupid questions, Leo."

She turned herself around and sat down next to him on the bench (Natalie, in defiance of her condition, didn't like to sit unless she had to, even though standing hurt). She slipped her arm around Leon's and leaned into him. "Listen", she said, "I just want you to know - no matter what decisions you make, or what happens - I just want you to know, Leon; you're the best thing that ever happened in my life. And sometimes I get afraid, and I worry that I'm going to lose this wonderful thing I've got, but that's no excuse for how I acted last night, and so I just want you to know that I'm sorry and I won't do anything like that again, alright?"

She smiled her radiant smile at him (and, Leon thought, nothing would ever be able to take away the beauty of her smile), and then she leaned in and kissed him softly on the cheek. "I love you", she said.

"Yeah, me too", Leon answered stupidly. "I mean - I feel the same! I mean -!"

Leon stopped, and forced himself to take a breath, and then he smiled and said, "I mean, 'yeah, I love you to, Natalie. Thanks."

She smiled at him and struggled back to her feet. "I've got to get to my next class."

"You want me to walk with you?" he asked.

"No, but thanks. Your in the opposite direction from me, and by the time I get there, you'll be late getting to yours. I'll be fine."

"Alright", he reluctantly agreed.

"See you later, stud", she said, and smiled at him again.

"You too, beautiful", was all he said. And then he sat there, smiling, as she walked away.

After Natalie had already left the cafeteria, Leon suddenly jerked his notepad open again, and flipped to a blank page. He'd just been hit with some serious inspiration, and it was time to write - classes be damned!

Scribbling as quickly as he could manage, this is what he wrote:

Verse 1

I could always read you like a book that I once loved.

And you could always move me like a song played on my heart.

Like a book with pages missing, I could never see the end,

But beauty's never-ending, and I saw yours right from the start.

Chorus

But life's not a book we read, or a song we sing, it's not that easy.

It's the color red, or sometimes it's blue, but mostly - mostly it's the color of you.

Leon leaned back from the page, and read what he'd wrote. He grinned. Much better! Yeah. Much better.

He looked at the page with song he'd just completed before Natalie had come over - the negative one - and he ripped it out of the pad. Standing, he took the old song, and the scraps of his lunch, and tossed it all into the trash. He didn't need any of it anymore. Then he grabbed his things and left the cafeteria.

[Dawn OOC]

Leon was running a bit late, so he cut around the side of the building, intending to take the sidewalk and re-enter the school further down. It meant that he had a relatively unimpeded dash instead of having to fight the crowds in the hall as everyone tried to switch classes.

As he left the shelter of the buildings and the trees, the bright sunlight poured over him, warm and hitting with a physical force. After the shaded area, it was like a sledge hammer to his body. It was also a reminder that it was April, and that school was nearly over. And while he and Natalie had forgiven one another, that didn't mean that the problem was resolved. He still didn't know what he was going to do after school.

He was outside and had taken three steps before realizing that there was no one out here, no one at all. And that was totally weird; usually, other students would use this to shave time off their trips to class. Pausing and tensing with the instincts of a fighter sensing an ambush, Leon looked around.

Behind him, leaning against the wall, a vaguely familiar man loitered. He was no student, not with that long hair and tattoos peeking out from under his tattered shirt. His dark skin and hair pegged him as coming from somewhere south of the Rio Grande. He was as tall as Leon and had maybe another fifty pounds on him; it was no wonder the shirt was wrecked. Leon's heart leapt with adreniline as he recognized him as one of Raphael's carnales. His books and notebooks thumped into the nsidewalk as Leoh brought up his fists and bounced onto his toes, ready to kick ass.

"Easy, gringo," the man muttered, moving just enough to light his cigarette. "I'm just here to deliver a message to you. Raphael wants to talk to you. Tonight, ten o'clock. Be at the Brengle Terrace Park baseball field, or at eleven, we'll be at your grandma's."

[Typhon]

Leon bent over and picked up his bag again.

"Pinche chingadero", he muttered. To the man who'd delivered the message, he presented him with the finger, and said, "fuck you, man. You tell that ojete I'll be there!"

And with that he headed off to class, purposefully not looking back to see how Raph's friend reacted. He'd be at the park tonight, but until then he'd just go about his day. No sense letting it eat at him, after all. Yeah, right.

[Dawn OOC]

The only reply from Raphael's lapdog was a gruff laugh, a noise which Leon didn't like but couldn't do much about. Instead, the mocking noise followed him as he stomped down the sidewalk. As he approached the door, he found that it had been wedged shut with a block of wood. It guaranteed privacy, Leon reflected glummly as he kicked the block away.

"Mr. Golias, imagine finding you out here, causing havoc." The smug, snide voice made Leon jump a little as the man behind him spoke. Mr. Verron didn't make much noise when he moved; word around the school was that the big, black man used to be black ops and not for the US, either. His soft accent wasn't identifiable, and kids had tried. But all of that only added to the mystery; Leon had publically asserted that the man probably had a wife and three kids and a bad back. But that was a lot harder to believe when Mr. Verron was staring down at you, with his dark eyes boring into you.

"I found it like this," Leon said, his stomach sinking. None of the teachers liked him, particularly Mr. Verron. He had the bad feeling that Raphael had just complicated his life unintentionally.

"Oh, I'm sure you did," Mr. Verron said, his nostrils flaring. "And I'm sure that you can consider the implications of blocking an exit on the building during your thirty minutes of detention tonight." Leon felt his face redden and his mouth open; Mr. Verron cut him off. "If you'd like more detention, please say the first expletive or derogatory comment that your two working brain cells can fire off."

Leon managed not to say anything, not out loud. Mr. Verron walked him to his next class like he was a kindergarner or something, but he somehow managed to not smart off. He didn't need more trouble, especially not with his new task. He had to find Natalie and ask her to wait for him to walk her home. But that proved to be an elusive goal, hampered by her limitations. He knew her class schedule by heart, but it could vary if she were having a rough day getting around. She was allowed to be late to classes or leave early to get to her next one. Leon left a note in her locker, but knew she might not check it. She carried most of her books in a basket on her walker so that she didn't have to make a lot of trips back and forth.

He didn't catch up with her, and it bothered him all through detention. What if she hadn't gotten his note? What if she were waiting for him, all alone? It ate at him, as the clock hand dragged along slowly.

The second he was released, he ran to their meeting spot, just inside the school's main gates. She wasn't there and he cursed. He almost ran off after her, but remembered that she might have left him a note if he didn't show. And there was a note from her, but not about missing him; she had left early because of a family emergency and she was sorry she wouldn't meet him that evening. Relieved that she was ok, he walked home, his mind already jumping ahead to his conflict that evening.

[Typhon]

Leon called Derrick and told him he wouldn't be able to make it to their weekly session of Cybergeneration role-playing goodness. Derrick was pretty upset, but he'd just have to deal with it, as far as Leon was concerned.

Leon waited until just before ten, and then he left the house. He knew he'd get there late, but he didn't give a damn. It'd piss of those idiots waiting for him, and he'd still be there way before eleven, which was the only time-limit he really had to worry about. Now he just had to hope he didn't get himself mugged or shot on the way there....

[Dawn OOC]

It was a close call; Leon had to take another street to avoid a large pack of guys looking for trouble. Normally, he wouldn't worry about giving it to them, but tonight, he needed to save his helping of whoop-ass for Raphael. Yeah, his fucking minion had said he wanted to talk. Leon was pretty sure the only thing Raphael wanted coming from his mouth was blood and the rattle of loose teeth. That was fine - Leon was expecting the same from Raphael.

Man, this who thing was completely bullshit. Raphael blamed him for Natalie's accident and the loss of his beautiful girlfriend, and this meeting was just going to be more bullshit. It made him grind his teeth in anger, just from having to mess with this asshole again.

They weren't hard to find. The group was standing in a loose knot in the middle of the field, smoking. They'd been smoking for a while - butts littered the ground around them. They must have been early, and Leon grinned at that thought that they'd been waiting on him for a while. They'd gotten the lights on somehow. Anywhere else, that'd draw the cops, but not here; all it would do was keep them away. They'd know something was going down, and they'd avoid it.

The rest of the park was dark, the shelters dark hulks a short distance away. The playground was closer, but its jungle gym and play toys were twisted by the shadows into bizarre, frightening shapes. It gave it an oppressive feel, no doubt why Raphael had chosen it. Leon briefly considered how many people Raphael had fucked up out here before shaking the thought off. It was irrelevant, because he wasn't like those other people. Drawing a breath, he choose his path of approach and started into the lion's den.

[Typhon]

Leon walked straight out into the middle of the field, not bothering to try and skulk up on anyone. Of course, he did make a point of staying clear of the shelters, and anything else that might serve as cover for people preparing an ambush. It might've sounded paranoid to people who didn't have much experience with honest-to-god ghettos, but if there was one thing gangs were famous for in SoCal, it was jumping people - and the whole point of jumping people was catching them by surprise. So Leon did his best to be not caught by surprise.

He made his way towards the group, letting them see him as they may, and stopped a respectable distance away.

"So I'm here", he said. "Whadda ya want?"

[Dawn OOC]

Raphael laughed. "Well, chichi, first, you're going chupame la polla, then I'm going to cut off your pinchacorta chapero."

"Right, ojete," Leon growled, preparing himself. This was going pretty much exactly as he planned, right down to the insults demanding that Leon service Raphael sexually and then allow himself to be unmanned. "You know, this sounds exactly like what you said to me just before I kicked your ass last time. You probably should have come up with new material. Just so that you have something new and interesting to say before I do the same old to you, hijo de puta."

Raphael laughed again as his carnales began to spread out, surrounding them. Leon felt his gut tighten up as he realized he was being wolf-packed. He moved to keep them from enclosing him, and they ended up in a horseshoe shape with him at the opening. They stared at him balefully as Raphael stepped forward, closing the distance until he was the same respectful distance from Leon as Leon had started with him. "Run, little gringo mierda. I am kind; I'll give you a twenty second head start."

Leon opened his mouth to smart off, but that's when Raphael started to glow. Blue light filled him from the inside, as if God had poured color and light into Raphael, imbuing him to the brim with power. It started in the center of his body and spread through his torso and down his arms and legs. His face was the last to be swallowed, but when it was, lightening began to dance between his fingers and his eyes. As the arcs bounced from his teeth to his eyes to his fingers and thunder rolled with every strike, Raphael shouted, "Run, gringo, or die here!"

[Typhon]

Leon just didn't get guys like Raphael. He was smart enough, but he certainly wasn't any kind of genius, and even by his low standards, guys like Raph were stinkin' morons. They couldn't even get their chosen lifestyles of violence and cruelty right - which was why they always lost to guys like Leon.

Leon listened as Raph answered his rhetorical question. Didn't he get it? Didn't any of the them get it? They were so stinking predictable! As though Leon had had any doubt what tonight was about. As if he'd come here all unawares and blissfully naive. It was starting to wear at him. All of it.

Leon was just plain sick of it all. Why did shit like this always have to happen to him? He didn't want to be rich or famous. He didn't want to be the biggest badass on the planet. Hell, he didn't really even want to be all that popular (even though he did tend to get a little bitter about always being stuck with the social outcasts and the losers).

He just wanted to be a guy. A normal guy. He wanted to have a normal life, doing something he didn't absolutely hate for a living, and he wanted to share it with a woman he cared about and who cared for him. That was it.

What he didn't want, was bullshit like this. Constantly having to put up with assholes like Raphael; assholes whose egos just couldn't deal with the fact that Leon was tougher than they were, or that he refused to cringe and whimper in fear of them, the way they wanted him to. The way their egos demanded. Fuck 'em. All of them. It's not like he'd prayed to God to be tough or something - he just didn't like the idea of living in fear of all the jerks in the world, so he'd made a commitment to always fight them. Always. And to never be afraid of them.

It wasn't his fault they were such complete shitstains, was it? So why should he have to suffer for it?

The past year had probably been the worst of Leon's life - all the more so because it'd been full of things he couldn't fight. Just lots and lots of capricious fate, or random chance, or a cruel god, or whatever the hell it was that was dumping on him. And there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it except suck it up and pretend it didn't bother him that much. Except that it did. All the time.

Everyday he had to face the fact that he wasn't some kind of hero - that he was no knight in shining armor. Natalie wasn't his princess, trapped in an Ivory Tower. And there was no dragon he could slay, or a curse that needed to be lifted in order to save her. The simple truth was that his life sucked, and her life sucked, and it was always going to be that way, and it was all the fault of the ugly, inbred, ignorant, worthless piece of shit who'd called him out here tonight!

And now that Leon was looking at Raphael - was standing here in the middle of his freaking Friday night looking at the cocksucker! - he realized something. He realized that, unlike him, he didn't want revenge for any wrong-doing - real or imagined. He didn't want revenge, he didn't want justice, and he didn't want vindication for anything.

He just wanted someplace to pour out all of the rage, and all of the festering bitterness that he'd been drowning in for most of the past year. He just wanted to pour it all down Raphael's bloody, toothless, gaping, screaming mouth, one fist at a time, until there just wasn't anything left.

No, Leon wasn't any kind of hero. But he knew how to fight.

Originally Posted By: Raphael

Raphael laughed again as his carnales began to spread out, surrounding them. Leon felt his gut tighten up as he realized he was being wolf-packed. He moved to keep them from enclosing him, and they ended up in a horseshoe shape with him at the opening. They stared at him balefully as Raphael stepped forward, closing the distance until he was the same respectful distance from Leon as Leon had started with him. "Run, little gringo mierda. I am kind; I'll give you a twenty second head start."

Leon opened his mouth to smart off, but that's when Raphael started to glow. Blue light filled him from the inside, as if God had poured color and light into Raphael, imbuing him to the brim with power. It started in the center of his body and spread through his torso and down his arms and legs. His face was the last to be swallowed, but when it was, lightening began to dance between his fingers and his eyes. As the arcs bounced from his teeth to his eyes to his fingers and thunder rolled with every strike, Raphael shouted, "Run, gringo, or die here!"

Leon felt his adrenaline spike when he realized that he might well have to fight off all of Raphael's homies simultaneously. But really? What had he expected? No, it would be too much to say it was any kind of a surprise that they would stoop to this. Almost to be expected, really.

By the time Raphael came to stand at a "respectable distance" from him, Leon was already all tensed muscles and bundled fury. By the time he started telling Leon to run, he'd already begun to position himself to do precisely that - but not in the direction Raphael intended. And by the time Raphael started to glow, Leon was already in motion, and it was too late for him to stop himself, unbelievable-super-power-granting-cruel-twists-of-fate or no.

In the back of his mind, Leon wondered if that really was electricity, and if it was, how much this was gonna hurt.

[Dawn OOC]

Leon's fist struck Raphael in what would have been a perfect strike to his sternum. It should have hurt like hell, make it harder for Raphael to breathe, and if Leon had been really lucky, would have put him down for the count.

Instead, the blue glow stopped his fist short of Raphael's chest. Leon could feel it pressing back against his hand like every description of an energy field that he'd ever read about. A small part of his brain marveled at the sensation of being stopped by energy, of pressing against something without physical form.

The rest of his mind was too busy getting fried. The arcs of electricity jumped from Raphael and poured through his body. Leon didn't have the option to scream, even if he'd wanted to do so; his body locked as voltage tore through him. The answer to his earlier musing was: yes, it was electricity and it hurt like hell.

Leon hit the ground, shaking from aftershocks. He knew he had to stand up, but his body wasn't obeying him yet. He could hear Raphael and his minions hooting and cheering, and there was another sound, like of something creaking and rattling metallically across the ground. He also heard someone cry out his name. It took him a moment to recognize Natalie's voice.

Gasping, Leon opened his eyes; it took a moment to focus. They had her handcuffed to a wheelchair, which one of the carnales was pushing. Natalie was sobbing and crying his name, pulling against her cuffs.

Someone grabbed him and jerked on his arm; when they couldn't get him up, someone else grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. Well, kinda to his feet - he wasn't able to stand up yet, and the two men had to hold him.

"Let him go!" Natalie screamed, leaning forward and working at her restraints. She'd obviously been trying for a while; her wrists were red and covered with long, angry scratches.

"Shut up!" Raphael screamed and drew back a hand to hit her. He barely stopped himself in time, and instead nodded to one of his men, who came over and back-handed her. "You get to watch him die, before I kill you." Raphael knelt in front of her chair. "Or not. I may just leave you out here, chained next to him all night. Let Fate decide what happens to you."

[Typhon]

Leon couldn't move. Or, he could, but not in a way that might, even loosely, be described as "coordinated". Mostly, he just kept twitching at random intervals for no reason that he could interpret.

Also, he hurt. Everywhere.

He was fairly certain that his arms (probably both, but definitely the one he'd hit Raphael with) were totally fried. He'd heard of people losing the use of a limb from being electrocuted, and while he wasn't sure, he suspected he'd just become one of those people. In any case, it didn't really matter. Not right now it didn't.

What mattered right now was that Raphael - that pendejo! - was hurting Natalie right in front of him, and there was nothing he could do about it. He could feel it driving him insane; feel the slow, boiling pressure of frustration in his head as his mind began to snap like a burned out twig. The pressure was so intense it didn't just feel like his mind was going to burst, it felt like he was.

And when Raph's carnal backhanded Natalie, he did.

The tiniest fraction of an instant passed, and with it, whole lifetimes of pain. Within that infinite nothing of space and time Leon could feel every atom of his being as they were unmade and remade a thousand times over.

Oh God, it hurt....

And then the frozen instant in time - seeming to last an eternity while he was within it - passed, and it was as though it shrank to a great distance as soon as it did, so that Leon could barely remember what he'd experienced or even be sure that he had experienced it. But no, the moment had left its mark on him, and he knew he could do things. Amazing things.

Terrible things.

Leon's body was still a mess, and though he had been changed (he could even feel his body reknitting itself as he hung between his enemies), his limbs still weren't listening to him. He wasn't even sure he had limbs anymore - where they should have been, he felt... something new, something still in the process of forming. But none of that mattered to him at that moment. The Frozen Instant had passed, and its sense of wonder along with it, and all of Leon's rage, frustration, and bitterness had returned in its place. And there, right in front of him, taunting and hurting the woman he loved, was the vessel that could hold it all - if he could just reach him.

Fuck this! He could do things, now! And it was time Raphael and his stupid, gang-banging friends found out all about it!

Leon didn't think about what he did next - not consciously, anyway - he just did it. After all, he could do things, now. And from his back, along either side of his spinal column, sprang some half-dozen shiny, metallic, writhing tentacles, all a slick and gunmetal black that barely gave back any of the silver moonlight that landed upon them. These would be his new limbs until his original ones became... whatever it was they were becoming.

He screamed incoherently as he sent the glimmering black tentacles screaming silently at the object of all his hate as it crouched menacingly before the object of all his love.

[Dawn OOC]

The slick, black tendrils slammed into Raphael. The blue glow around Raphael reacted flaring bright enough to rival the overhead lights for a second. Then Raphael was airborne, and not under his own power. As the handsome Hispanic tumbled out of the area of the lights, his carnales went crazy. The two holding him jumped away with a shove, tossing him face-first into the infield's dirt.

His tentacles were recoiling, starting to find a new target, namely, the man who had hit Natalie. That asshole grabbed her hair and wrenched her head back, holding a knife to her throat. At the same time, Leon was aware that the ones who had been holding him had pulled guns and were pointing them at him. He had to choose, and so he did; one tendril snaked around the arm of the homie holding his girlfriend. Seeing Natalie safe was his first concern. The other tendrils slammed into the knife-weilding man and ripped him away from Natalie. Unfortunately, the rip was literal; the tentacle was still holding the man's arm, and the force of the other striking him had ripped off the limb. Natalie screamed as she was sprayed in gore, but she was safe and unharmed. And that was what was important.

Above him, he could see one of the thugs pointing his gun down at him. Leon tensed for the shot, wondering if he'd survive this wound, with the damage Raphael had already done. The gunshot was very loud, but Leon didn't feel anything, not even an impact; the moron had missed somehow.

[Typhon]

Leon didn't bother to stop and think about his luck as the wanna-be gangsta missed him, he just leapt up and acted. That was something Leon had always had going for him in violent and chaotic situations; he knew how to act first, and worry about impossible odds after. One thing he couldn't help but notice, and think about, however, was that his body was still fixing itself - and at a phenominal rate, too! He could tell he was still injured, but he barely even felt it anymore.

The guys with the guns were, as far as Leon was concerned, the biggest threats at the moment. It would probably be asking too much to hope that no one else had any guns in this group, but Leon had only seen the two so far, so those were the ones he'd deal with first.

Positioned as he was between the two of them, Leon knew immediately how to handle them, and he felt no remorse as he did so. All six of the tendrils still writhing through the air in front of him suddenly snapped back and to the sides, three on each side of him, slamming with tremendous force into both of the thugs who stood in their way. Hopefully that would put both of them down for the count so that he could focus on other worries. Like Natalie.

Without waiting to make sure both gun-wielding gangstas were down for good, Leon ran to Natalie and positioned himself between her and anyone who might threaten her again.

[Dawn OOC]

The two gangstas collapsed nicely, flying backwards just like Raphael had, but unlike their boss, they didn’t have his handy blue force field to cushion them. They landed hard and heavy, and weren’t moving as Leon dashed to his love’s side. Her scared, scarred face looked up at him with such fear, but he knew it wasn’t fear of him. It was fear for him, and Leon redoubled his determination to see her out of this alive.

There was a flash of blue in the night and Leon twisted to face it, sure that he was going to see Raphael racing back toward him. Instead, one of Raphael’s bolts was racing toward him, as if he were the ground and Raphael the clouds. Without thought, the gun-metall tendrils intercepted the beam, taking the brunt of the strike. The force of the blow still knocked him backwards, and to him, that was worse than getting his head cut off. He didn’t want to leave Natalie’s side, not when three of Raphael’s men were still around, and Raphael was still fighting.

He heard the gunshot as he controlled his fall, rolling onto his feet with unexpected ease. When he looked up, one of Raphael’s men was backing up, his face pale. He seemed shocked by something on the ground. Another one had a gun out, and he was pointing it at Leon, but Leon didn’t pay any attention. Even when the gun went off and he felt something shove his shoulder painlessly, he didn’t pay any attention. He couldn’t see anything other than Raphael’s sixth thug standing over her, over Natalie and her wheelchair had been flipped backwards, and her head was back and she wasn’t moving.

[Typhon]

Leon screamed inarticulately, his cry thoughtless and full of pain and grief, as he lunged at the man responsible for Natalie's condition. He didn't use the tentacle-things that had miraculously sprung from his back a moment ago, and were still writhing through the air for several meters in several different directions, because it would be far too impersonal. Instead, he began running at the man he'd targeted in his anger, and simply reached for him, though he was still many meters away from the man himself (and as he reached, a small part of his conscious mind noticed that, yes, he did still have limbs, but in place of his old, ruined arms, his new ones seemed to be made of the same inky black metal as the tentacles). As soon as his new arms reached out as far as his old one could ever have gone normally another strange and bizarre thing happened; his new arms split - virtually exploded, in fact - into numerous writhing tentacles (just like those coming from his back) that kept stretching and extending as they homed in on their unsuspecting target.

But there was something slightly different about the tendrils coming from his arms - these tendrils ended in tips sharper than any spear. And when they struck the thug that was their target, they didn't just grab or throw the man, they pierced him in a dozen places at once, and then they pulled in a dozen different directions while still lodged within him. The results weren't pretty.

Their job done, Leon's arms snapped back into place, and their proper form, with startling speed as Leon kept running towards Natalie in blind grief and rage.

[Dawn OOC]

The scene was rapidly turning into a nightmare, lifted straight from a horror film. Two men lay not far away, struggling to breathe. Then there was Giblets-Boy, because that was all that was left of him. And finally, the innocent, broken angel, lying way too still. It was no wonder that the carnal turned and ran, fleeing the scene as fast as he could. He was joined by the guy who had shot Leon. Seeing a bullet bounce off of his skin and then his buddy ripped apart by the enraged Leon, he was also checking out for the night.

Leon saw none of this. All he could see was Natalie, and the blood that he could now see - whose blood he wasn't sure, but that didn't help him at the moment. And beyond that, beyond her, Raphael looking as shocked as his men, and completely furious. This wasn't the plan but the plan had been shot to Hell by Leon's fortune in eruption. Still running forward, the angry Hispanic man threw out another blast of crackling blue light. Again, it struck Leon's tendrils, which had the presense of mind that he didn't at the moment. All he could see was her, but his mind was trying to tell him of the impending danger of Raphael. Sooner or later, the man would get an attack through, and then Leon would be in trouble.

[Typhon]

Leon was still in shock, and very deep in it. The past several seconds had been filled with more impossible, horrible, and unexpected things than his entire life up to this point. He just didn't know what to do and, he was beginning to fear, there really wasn't anything he could do - not to save Natalie, anyway.

Dimly, Leon was aware of an approaching threat, and it took an enormous effort of will to turn away from Natalie to see what it was. When he did manage to tear his gaze away from her and look up he was met with the sight of Raphael. The pendejo. The one responsible for all this. The one who'd been given powers from out of a comic book and, like a cheap, cliched super-villian, had turned around and used them for nothing more than petty revenge against two high-school students. And now Natalie was dead because of him!

Leon stood up and started walking towards the man. "Look at what you've done, asshole! Look!", he shouted, pointing behind him at the fallen wheelchair, and the young woman sprawled within it.

Then, much more quietly, he said, "you're dead."

Leon struck out at Raphael in much the same way he'd struck out at "Giblets-boy", his right arm exploding outward in a mass of lethal tendrils that raced at the gangsta with ballistic force. Without waiting to see how effective his first strike was, Leon struck at the man with his left arm in the same way. The new limbs sprouting from his back were still writhing through the air, acting as an effective defense against Raphael's bolts of electricity, but ready to take their place as deadly spears inside of the man at a moments notice as well.

[Dawn OOC]

Leon didn't get through Raphael's field on that strike, or the one after. But Raphael wasn't having much luck with him either; all of Raphael's strikes were blocked by the tentacles. It was becoming a battle of endurance, but Leon wouldn't - couldn't lose. His Natalie was gone - there wasn't anything left for him but to avenge her. The loss of the only thing he cared about had driven him into a blind rage. His persistant inability to hurt Raphael was only enraging him further.

And then, the miracle. Leon's tendrils struck Raphael, first the left ones and then the right. They sank into his chest and his gut, and Leon followed them by sinking his arms into Raphael as well. Then all ten limbs pulled outward and away, as Raphael screamed and struck at him one final time. The electrical shock was as bad as the first, if not worse, and Leon collapsed, flopping like a doll.

He might be dying. He didn't care. A face appeared over him, silver and luminous in the moonlight. It looked like Natalie, kinda, though from before her accident. It might be an angel, which was natural, because Leon had always thought that Natalie had been angelic. But she was said; tears were in her eyes as she plead with him. He couldn't hear a word - he couldn't hear anything - but he could see her lips making his name and saying please. As the warm drops from her eyes hit his face, he smiled and murmured, "Natalie."

And it went all black.

[Titan]

He came back to his body as one who has been travelling the universe. His clarity of mind, while illusory, made him forget his pains. As the feeling of his mortal frame returned, so the clarity fled. By the time Leon opened his eyes, he felt cheated, yet more or less back to normal.

He was under a rosebush. He sat up slowly. His body screamed after the beating he had taken from Raphael, but nothing seemed broken. Actually, he was in a garden. The sun shone down on his face. Eventually, he convinced his body to stand.

He looked across the gorgeous landscape. The flowers were in beautiful technocolor, and the placement of each seemed perfect. As he stood there, a light mist came down from the cloudless sky, soothing his skin, and the plants.

A silvery dot appeared over one of the hedges framing the lush paradise. It sped towards him at an alarming rate. Within seconds, it hovered within ten feet of where Leon stood: a legless robot, with gently glowing blue eyes and long delicate arms. It spoke:

"Pardon me, citizen, but are you in need of assistance? A routine medical scan indicates that your health is in jeapordy from external injury. In addition, if you will please attend to your GLP, I believe that you will find that you are in an area where your i-tag has not been presented. I regret to inform you that the authorities have been contacted. However, may I offer you assistance in matters of health or refreshment?"

[Typhon]

As the crystal clarity of the nearly dead (and god-only-knew-where) wore off, Leon became increasingly confused. In all honesty he was starting to lose all frame of reference for things, and a part of him wondered if maybe his mind hadn't really snapped during the fight with Raphael, leaving him trapped in some delusional fantasy world where nothing made sense. He'd just experienced something utterly fantastic and horribly traumatic in a familiar setting, and now he found himself experiencing something utterly mundane in a totally inexplicable and unfamiliar setting.

Where was he, and what was going on?

And where was Natalie?! Realizing that she wasn't there - or rather, realizing that he was somewhere else, where she wasn't - left him feeling horribly betrayed and frustrated. Was he to be denied even the simple closure of mourning over her? Of being able to watch over her as she was placed in her final resting place? It wasn't enough that she was taken from him little by little, until finally, even their life together was ripped away from him; it seemed he wasn't even allowed a decent opportunity to mourn that loss....

Fine. So be it. Whoever or whatever was doing this to him, he wasn't going to give in to it all. He was not going to turn into some whiny, bitter, weak little fool who couldn't even see beyond his own grief. Leon didn't know much, but he did know how to fight, and he'd be damned if he was going to submit without one.

In the brief interval of time while he stood alone in the garden, he took stock of his situation. Once again, Leon could feel his amazing new body reknitting itself; healing the damage it had sustained at an incredible pace - so fast he could actually watch the effect in some places. But there was more than just that. There were his arms, seemingly made entirely out of the gunmetal black material that his... whatever-those-things-were that had launched themselves from his back a few minutes ago (last night?). And, Leon realized, feeling something different and confirming the suspicion after pulling up a pant-leg, his legs were the same way - all inky black and metallic.

Leon couldn't help but think of the material as 'hexite'; and with that thought came the realization that he had very nearly become an exact duplicate of the character he role-played every week with his friends (though, given what he'd done during that fight - if it had really happened - he was significantly more powerful than Rem "Tank" Dalke, his Tinman cyberevolved character in the Cybergeneration game he played). In the Cybergeneration RPG, a "nanite-plague" is mysteriously unleashed on an unsuspecting populace in a Cyberpunk future American dystopia. Those the plague doesn't kill (usually kids), it infects with hyper-advanced nanites which then generate the material known as 'hexite' within the victims/hosts. 'Hexite' was a purely fictional, tubular-shaped carbon molecule with an amazingly (and somewhat unbelievably) broad range of applications, leading to several different varieties of "cyberevolved" (victims of the plague) within the game (basically, there are different classes of characters to choose from, each with its own unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses). "Tinmen", as they were called, were victims whose limbs had been replaced entirely with 'hexite', with even more of the material stored within their bodies, which the hyper-enhanced nanites would then shape and mold at a moment's notice, and entirely at the victim/host's mental command. These 'hexite reserves' could then be used to shape personal weaponry, armor, and any number of other useful forms and shapes. Basically, Tinmen were the warrior class in the game. You get the idea.

Once he realized the connection, Leon really didn't know what to think. Of course he'd heard all about the novus phenominon - what teenaged American boy hadn't? But this? It just seemed to out-there. Leon doubted he now had actual nanites, billions of microscopic machines, running through his body all of a sudden, but that somehow seemed more reasonable than saying that his limbs had turned into 'hexite' (or whatever the hell this was), and he could now reshape large portions of his body into lethal weapons "just because". As if he didn't have enough to think about right now....

His brain didn't want to deal with it. At all. So he put it out of his head, and turned to examine his surroundings. Once he did, he started to wonder if he was in some kind of really lame heaven or something. This made him a little nervous, because he seriously doubted that he deserved to be in heaven, and if that's where he was, he wasn't looking forward to the moment when whoever was running this joint realized they'd made a mistake, and booted his ass into hell. If heaven was this lame, he shuddered to think what hell would be like.

He didn't get long to examine things, though, because the strange floating robot approached, and he naturally turned all his attention towards it. Incidentally, it caused him to think that this probably wasn't heaven after all. Leon had a hard time seeing heaven being staffed by funky-looking automata that looked like they fell out of a happy-fluffy scifi flick. Which, he supposed, was probably good news.

Originally Posted By: Strange Floating Robot

"Pardon me, citizen, but are you in need of assistance? A routine medical scan indicates that your health is in jeapordy from external injury. In addition, if you will please attend to your GLP, I believe that you will find that you are in an area where your i-tag has not been presented. I regret to inform you that the authorities have been contacted. However, may I offer you assistance in matters of health or refreshment?"

Oh, that's right. He was hurt. And, yeah, that did kind of suck hardcore, now that he was being reminded about it. But he didn't want to think about it - it reminded him of Natalie, and he didn't want to think about that. About the overturned wheelchair, and her lying there, and all the - No.

Leon looked at the robot and asked, "uh... what's a GLP? And an i-tag? What's that? And what do you mean, 'contacted the authorities?"

Leon and "the authorities" were not, generally speaking, on the best of terms.

Hey, wait a minute! Wasn't suddenly turning into a super-powered being from out of a story supposed to be a cool experience? Dude! He was totally getting gipped!

[Titan]

The robot cocked it's 'head' and began to jabber.

"The Global Location Port should be loaded into your on-board system. It is part of the basic package included on any cellular telecomputer. Have you misplaced or lost your TC? However, it is not possible that you could have exited the San Angeles CitiComplex without presenting an identity tag. Scanning."

Without warning, the robot's eyes change from blue to amber to red. When next it speaks, the volume is head-splitting.

"WARNING. BE ADVISED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED AS AN UNREGISTERED H.S.N. I HAVE NOTIFIED THE AUTHORITIES OF YOUR STATUS, AS WELL AS THE RASHOUD ENFORCEMENT SQUAD OF SAN ANGELES. PLEASE REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. THIS UNIT IS SCANNING FOR ANY QUANTUM ACTIVITY, AND ANY FURTHER VIOLATION OF N.U.F.U EDICT 1171.2.4.1 WILL BE TAKEN AS A HOSTILE ACT. WARNING. BE ADVISED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED..."

The robot looped his announcement. In the sky just ahead and above the robot, Leon could see several specks fly up from the horizon. They seemed to be heading in his direction.

[Typhon]

Leon clapped his hands over his ears and shouted, "Dude! Would you please, Shut! Up!"

Of course the floating robot didn't shut up. Leon was driven to a near-frantic state of mind by the sheer volume of the robot's amplified voice, and he didn't know what to do. A part of him wanted to just run away, but given what the robot was saying (shouting!) that didn't sound like the best idea in the world. But on the other hand, he didn't think he could tolerate standing there next to the thing with its booming message much longer, and it was becoming harder and harder not to just lash out at the thing - see what happened if he hit it really hard. Hey, it used to work on his old Nintendo system when that thing went on the fritz; one or two good wacks, and it'd be right back to normal. What was to say it wouldn't be the same with this thing? (Leon wasn't the most mechanically inclined person alive, truth be told)

Fortunately (or not, as the case might be), Leon spotted the "specks" flying in his direction, and that helped him decide to wait things out. Hopefully, someone would show up who'd know how to turn this damned thing off, and (hey, here's a thought!) maybe even be able to tell him what in the hell was going on....

[Titan]

The specks quickly grew into man-shapes, sleekly armored in silver and gold. They spread apart, and hover in a rough circle around Leon. They all hold what look like weapons, although they are of a sort that Leon does not recognize. The one facing Leon speaks.

"Your compliance has been noted, and speaks well of you. Please note that we are duly authorized agents of the Nations United for Utopia, and that you are an unregistered Homo Sapiens Novus. Your Quantum Signature has been logged, and is being dampened... now."

The five coast slowly to the ground. The one who spoke waves off the robot, and raises his visor. Inside the suit, he appears to be a normal man of Asian descent. He smiles tightly.

"Just erupted, huh? Good for you, you won the genetic lottery. I figure you for a teleporter, since you are in a replentishment zone and your i-tag isn't logged. But, you are probably a bit out of sorts. That's ok. That's what we're here for. Now, you know the drill, first you have to register at the Rashoud Center, then the fame and the fortune. You guys always want the fame and the fortune part up front, el oh el. Ok, where do you rent cubic? San Angeles? Las Phoengas? Sacracisco? Further?"

[Typhon]

Originally Posted By: Titan

The specks quickly grew into man-shapes, sleekly armored in silver and gold. They spread apart, and hover in a rough circle around Leon. They all hold what look like weapons, although they are of a sort that Leon does not recognize. The one facing Leon speaks.

"Your compliance has been noted, and speaks well of you. Please note that we are duly authorized agents of the Nations United for Utopia, and that you are an unregistered Homo Sapiens Novus. Your Quantum Signature has been logged, and is being dampened... now."

Leon glanced around nervously and said, "uh... hey." He added a weak smile and an even weaker wave of the hand to it, attempting to be reassuring, but probably just emphasizing his nervousness instead.

To the armored figures, Leon's appearance probably wasn't nearly as shocking as it would have been where Leon had just come from, so it was hardly surprising that they barely glanced at his darkly glimmering metal eyes, or the sleek gunmetal surface of his arms. Leon himself was probably more disturbed by the sight of his own arms than these mysterious figures, and he wasn't even aware of what had happened to his eyes yet....

Originally Posted By: Titan

"Just erupted, huh? Good for you, you won the genetic lottery. I figure you for a teleporter, since you are in a replentishment zone and your i-tag isn't logged. But, you are probably a bit out of sorts. That's ok. That's what we're here for. Now, you know the drill, first you have to register at the Rashoud Center, then the fame and the fortune. You guys always want the fame and the fortune part up front, el oh el. Ok, where do you rent cubic? San Angeles? Las Phoengas? Sacracisco? Further?"

Leon stared blankly at this for a few seconds. Then he started trying to make sense out of what was making absolutely no sense at all.

"Erupted? Oh! You mean this whole super-powers thing, huh? Uh, yeah, I guess it's ok.... Waittaminute!", he said, holding up his hands as the armored stranger started hitting him with a barrage of incomprehensible questions.

Once he could get a word in, Leon eyed the looked-like-weapons, and said respectfully, "sorry to cut you off like that, but I am totally confused by all of this right now! I have no idea what 'rent cubic' means, and I've never even heard those cities you mentioned, ok? All I know is that this", he indicated the inky black chrome of his arms as he spoke, "happened after I got jumped by some punk-ass gangbangers near where I live and one of 'em shot my girlfriend in the head! I tried to fight 'em off, but there was another - whaddayacallit - another novus there, and he'd already injured me before I, uh, 'erupted', and I just couldn't... do it." Leon was obviously becoming agitated, and the strange sight of tears coming from metal eyes made it even more apparent.

He took a moment to wipe away the tears self-consciously before continuing. "The other novus hit me with, like, uh, electricity or something, and I went down hard. I thought I was gonna die, but then I woke up here - and I don't even know where here is!"

Leon paused for another moment and gave the lead armored figure a pleading look, a wet gleam still showing on the surface of his metal eyes, and then he said in a shaky but passionate voice, "Look man, no disrepect, but I don't give a shit about being famous, or whatever it is you want me to register for, alright? I just wanna find Natalie, ok? She deserves better than... than...." Leon's eyes started to tear up again, and he looked away, wiping at them with the heel of his hand.

"Fuck!", he said, in a voice of utter, overwhelmed, and complete defeat and frustration.

[Titan]

The armored men exchanged a glance. The 'leader' shrugged. He pulled his faceplate back into place. His voice had a hollow, mechanized tone again.

"Obviously you are distraught, sir. Completely understandable. Given that you are disoriented, and we have dampened your quantum signature, we will transport you to the San Angeles Rashoud Clinic. It is the closest one, and the doctors there will be better able to answer any questions you have, or put you in touch with your loved ones. Ok, hold on tight. Jaykay, there's nothing to hold on to, you're going to ride on a field generated by the LPF armor. And, here we go..."

As the armored figures rise up into the air, Leon feels himself rising up with them. They turn, in unison, and face the horizon. The six of them accelerate away at a good clip, yet much more sedately than the armored men had approached in the first place. Still, after just a few moments, Leon sees a towering skyscraper in the distance.

As they get closer, Leon realizes that he has badly misjudged the size of the tower. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It juts out of the ground alone, surrounded by green, lush growth. They approach, and Leon sees an airship launch from one of the many circular platforms sticking out of the side of the structure. Suddenly, the perspective clicks, and he is flabbergasted by the size of this... 'building'. He estimates that the thing is easily a mile across, and possibly three or four miles high. He looked down. He seemed to be as high as he would be on a short airplane ride. Maybe 10,000 feet. And the thing was still higher. They flew in, and Leon kept thinking they were going to hit the side, but they kept going. By the time they reached a landing platform, the side of the 'building' stretched off as far as he could see, and the top of the structure disappeared into the clouds.

The armored figures flew him in for a landing. Once they touched down, the 'leader' flipped up his face plate.

"Welcome to San Angeles, friend. We are lucky enough to have outer cubic, so we don't have to travel the Corridor. This way, please."

On the landing platform were six... aircars? Two seater jet planes? The leader was gesturing to an opening roughly 20 feet square, in the side of the wall.

[Typhon]

*Typical cops* thought Leon, *no matter where you go, it's always the same. These guys don't give a shit about anything I just said. Bastards.*

With no small amount of resignation, Leon allowed himself to be flown (or levitated, or whatever) to wherever it was they were going. As they approached the arcology (and, oddly, Leon actually knew what to call the tower, once he'd realized what it was, on account of the particular brand of scifi roleplaying games he was so fond of) Leon couldn't help but feel a rising sense of excitement, almost despite himself. Something this gigantic, this... awesome... how could he not react to it?

The flying thing had been startling, and a little scary at first, and for that matter, so had the mega-arcology, but after a while it was all so surreal that having a strong emotional reaction to it was sort of impossible. Leon's mind couldn't really process it all in one go, so it just kind of accepted it without asking questions. What else could he do?

One thing was for sure, if the folks he was being directed to were more of the same bureaucratic morons as these Judge Dredd wannabes, then he might as well give up hope on getting any real answers, or recieving any real help. The well-honed instincts of a high school senior were telling him to just keep his head down and let the "grownups" feel like they were in charge, and actually accomplishing something, while he looked for real information, or an opportunity to get out of here. Wherever "here" was....

Once his feet were solidly on the ground again, and the lead soldier indicated the opening he was to use, Leon continued his charade of obediance and started towards it.

[Titan]

Leon entered the indicated opening, and was immediately swarmed by labcoats. The first to approach him, a man, introduced himself as Dr. Geoffrey Mann.

"Right this way, if you would please. Hold still, now."

A strobe of light immersed Leon, then was still. A 'coat' rushed in with a needle. After a couple of failed attempts, they were finally able to take a sample from his shoulder, since it seemed unaffected by the carbon coating his arms and legs had acquired. Dr. Mann indicated what looked like a vision test, and asked Leon to place his forehead squarely against the blue strip. Without a second thought, Leon did so. Only after a solid CHUNK, and sharp pain in his forehead, did he second guess that decision.

Dr. Mann gestured toward a pair of chairs.

"Please, have a seat," he said, taking a seat for himself, "Tell me what you can about your eruption."

[Typhon]

Leon tried to put up with the medical examination patiently, but it was so monumentally stupid, from his point of view at least, that it wasn't easy. When what he'd thought was a vision test turned out to be both not a vision test and extremely painful, his patience ran out.

Originally Posted By: Titan

Dr. Mann gestured toward a pair of chairs.

"Please, have a seat," he said, taking a seat for himself, "Tell me what you can about your eruption."

"What the hell was that?!", Leon asked, clearly agitated, indicating the mysterious pain-causing device.

"And why the hell do you guys want to know about my 'eruption' now? I already tried to tell you people how it happened, and no one wanted to hear it! I am sick of this bullshit, man! I don't know where I am, what's happened to me, or what happened to my girlfriend! And not a goddamned one of you assholes care, do you?! You just wanna run your stupid tests and punch holes in my forehead, or at least that's what it feels like!"

Leon very pointedly did not take a seat, instead crossing his arms and glowering at the doctor and anyone else who happened to be in his field of vision.

After a brief pause, Leon asked, in a notably calmer tone, "now, what - exactly - did you guys just do to me?"

[Titan]

Dr. Mann looks at Leon for a moment as though he has announced that he is from Alpha Centauri. Then, he visibly marshals his features into a smooth, concerned mask.

"You have been tagged. It is important to get it done early, for security reasons. Do not be alarmed. The incision heals without a scar, even on novas without heightened healing prowess, and I think you will find that even the pain is lessening. We no longer use microchips, a common misconception. You have merely been injected with a nanapsule. The nanites carried within will tag the DNA in the cells of your bones with an identifiable gene sequence which will also cause your skin to emit a very faint, non toxic radiation, which allows us to track your location. This is all standard procedure in processing new eruptions, and is no cause for alarm."

He makes a quick note on a chart while he is speaking, glances down at his note, then looks back at Leon.

"As far as I know, you have not offered details concerning your eruption to me, or any member of my staff. If you are referring to the Enforcement Squad, I am afraid that they largely ignore any statements made by erupting novas. The LPF armor may 'level the playing field', as it's name implies, however erupting novas can be extremely dangerous, and their entire mission is to bring you here without causing any harm. You are right. They don't care. It's not their job to care. It is, however, my job to care, and I care very much. Now. You are in the San Angeles MegaCity. You are a newly erupted nova. You are experiencing some confusion and possible disorientation. That said, tell me, if you will, about your eruption. Tell me what happened to your girlfriend."

Dr. Mann settled back in his chair to listen.